In defence of C (was:Re:Anybody else tried FreeBasic (aka fbc)?)

[Alex Beamish]

On 10/26/05, D. Hugh Redelmeier <hugh-pmF8o41NoarQT0dZR+AlfA at public.gmane.org> wrote:
>
> | Date: Thu, 13 Oct 2005 15:21:12 -0400
> | From: Alex Beamish <talexb-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w at public.gmane.org>
> | Of course, my Dad got me addicted by showing my little bits of APL code,
> and
> | by road-testing an IBM 'portable' called the 5100 that did both APL and
> | BASIC. It was called a portable because .. it had a handle. That unit
> | weighed 50-60 pounds, and would only have fit on Andre the Giant's lap.


I've been corrected .. that term should be 'luggable', not 'portable'.

That too was an amazing machine. The APL was written for the IBM
> System/360 (the standard mainframe from IBM). The 5100 contained an
> emulator for large parts of the 360 so it could run that APL. Quite a
> tour de force.


Ah, I didn't know that -- very interesting, but it makes sense.

I do know that my Dad took a sabbatical from the Actuarial division to work
in Data Processing for a couple of years, coding COBOL and assembler on the
IBM 360. The IBM office in Montreal was down the street from where they were
at University (now Rene Levesque, I think) and Dorchester, and the IBM guys
would come by to service the machine pretty regularly.

>From what I remember of APL, it was seriously terse -- someone described it
as "Chicken scratches crossed with Greek." Having developed in Perl for a
couple of years, I would say APL makes Perl look like BASIC.

And my Dad still has APL on his Windows 98 workstation, and tinkers around
with it when he gets the urge. Some stuff you never forget.

Alex

--
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